ARTICLES ABOUT CINEMA PARADISO BY DATE - PAGE 2

Giuseppe Tornatore, the Italian director-writer of "The Star Maker," is a filmmaker intoxicated with movies: with the people, equipment, history -- even, at times, the film itself as its whirs through a projector. And though this infatuation can lead Tornatore into rapturous imagery, as in his 1989 Oscar winner "Cinema Paradiso," it also can make his movies seem sentimental and overblown. That's the case with "The Star Maker" -- which is about a con man peddling phony screen tests in the early '50s.

" `Cinema Paradiso': It's a movie that tries to capture the imagination of a culture. It's the best foreign film I've seen as it deals with people's dreams, aspirations and wishes and shows that anything is possible." Maria Pappas, Cook County commissioner, on her last video choice.

If "Scent of a Woman" sounds like a sexist title for a film, blame it on the Italians. The new Al Pacino picture was "inspired by" the 1975 Italian film "Profumo Di Donna." In fact, the partial remake is the first in a wave of such films that will soon to engulf the nation's theaters. Hollywood is playing the remake game, gambling that foreign-language art house hits will translate into English-language box-office successes. From "La Femme Nikita" to "Cinema Paradiso," studio executives are taking a hard look at overseas triumphs, trying to decide if their linguistic and cultural nuances can be converted into Americanese.

The Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore was reminiscing about winning the Academy Award for best foreign film last year with "Cinema Paradiso," the nostalgic, sentimental tale of a grizzled projectionist and a little boy growing up in a Sicilian town after World War II. After winning the Oscar, "I had many proposals," Tornatore said, "and it was much easier to put together the elements of making a film, even though I confess I didn`t want...

Like the poltergeist of cinema fame, they were here, then they were gone and now they`re back-and stronger than ever. The After Hours Film Society, formed a year ago, will show "Wings of Desire" Monday night, the second monthly screening at the New Hinsdale Theatre since the society returned to Du Page County. "Our original intention was to bring art and foreign films to the western suburbs," explained Debbie Venezia, the society's founder and executive director. "When the Hinsdale Theatre closed, we went to the Lake Theatre in Oak Park, but we decided to return when the New Hinsdale Theatre opened."

By rights, Italy's proud and celebrated film industry should be smiling. A young Italian director, Giuseppe Tornatore, took home the Academy Award for best foreign film last year with "Cinema Paradiso," a nostalgic look at an old-time movie house. Beyond Tornatore, Italians can point to a healthy crop of new filmmakers who, while still relatively unknown in the United States, have burst forth in the last few years with critically acclaimed works. Italian cinematographers, set designers and other technicians have skills putting them much in demand both in Europe and the United States.

Not everyone is thrilled about the theatrical release of "The Godfather Part III." For those concerned with the perpetuation of the Italian-as-gangster stereotype, Francis Ford Coppola's long-awaited conclusion to the Corleone saga is about as welcome as a horse's head in the bed. "Part III" caps a movie year that gave us Steve Martin's comic wiseguy in "My Blue Heaven" and Martin Scorsese's insider's view of life within the mob, "GoodFellas."...

By Lawrence van Gelder, New York Times News Service | October 25, 1990

"I was born in `44 myself," said Just Betzer, "so I`m a late-war child." The Danish-born producer of films that include the Academy Award-winning "Babette's Feast" was tracing the route that led him to his latest venture, "A Day in October." A romance set amid the efforts of the Danish Resistance to save the country's Jewish population during the Nazi occupation, "A Day in October" has been before the cameras in and around Copenhagen since early last month. Filming is expected to conclude by the beginning of November.

At the heart of the immense canvas Bertrand Tavernier gives us in "Life and Nothing But" lies a small, conventional war love story whose outline should be familiar to moviegoers the world over: A beautiful aristocrat seeking her lover lost in battle bumps heads with the cantankerous military officer in charge of locating MIAs. Their initial friction yields to mutual respect and, finally, love. With the estimable Phillipe Noiret ("Cinema Paradiso") as the officer and spicy Sabine Azema as the aristocrat, Tavernier seems to be reinventing a classic Tracy-Hepburn vehicle (or is it Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant?